The Anglican Ordinariate: What about the numbers?

Michael Sean Winters
|
Nov. 19, 2010
Distinctly Catholic

My friend Austen Ivereigh has a report on this morning's press conference [1]in London about the future of the Anglican Ordinariate, which will be constituted early next year. The UK's Catholic bishops promised 250,000 pounds to get the group started, although that figure is a drop in the bucket compared to the relative wealth of the Anglican Church being abandoned by those coming over to Rome. Last week, in an editorial in the Tablet, the editors wrote that it is expected 5 bishops, 50 priests and 500 lay people have expressed a desire to join the new Ordinariate. Those numbers do not seem proportional to me. One bishop for every 100 laity? Perhaps it is because at the top of the Anglican hierarchy, the bishops were mindful of the universal nature of the Anglican communion and, just so, more attuned to the way that communion has fractured in the past few years. Still, they had better bring enough of their lay people with them or the UK Bishops Conference is going to be subsidizing this Ordinariate forever. Does anyone have any ideas why so many prelates and so few lay folk are prepared to join?